


Death-coloured

by GloriaMundi



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Community: contrelamontre, M/M, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-31
Updated: 2003-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:53:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The white dust of Troy finds its way everywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death-coloured

The white dust of Troy found its way everywhere. It dulled the gleam of armour, clogged a man's nostrils, blurred his vision. But it was not dust that gleamed amid the red of Patroclus' wound.

Achilles turned away, left the tent. He did not listen to the muttering that mocked him for being afraid to see blood. Blood was not the problem.

He still remembered the first time he had seen what lay beneath his own skin. He'd stared, fascinated, at the nauseating white that showed at the bottom of a deep, ugly gash just above his knee. At first he hadn't realised that he was looking at bone.

"This is the long bone in your thigh," Chiron had lectured. "See, there: the sword-stroke chipped the bone."

"Will I ... will I die?" Achilles, still a boy, had asked.

Chiron had laughed indulgently. "No wound can slay you, for your mother made you invulnerable."

Achilles had a brief, bright vision of flames. He shook his head to clear it, and his tutor's hand faltered as he plucked a sliver of white bone from the mess of blood and tissue.

"Be still. This is delicate work... This wound will not kill you, but you will carry the mark as long as you live." Chiron took a sponge and cleaned away the blood again. His breath was warm and smelt of herbs. "And when you die if you should die this bone will bear the mark."

That night, Achilles had dreamt for the first time of his own white bones, mocking him with their undeserved immortality when through some mischance, some divine displeasure he lay dead after all.

He'd dreamt that dream again, when deep wounds showed him what lay beneath his flesh: once, when he'd broken his arm riding, and could not hold a sword in his right hand. The white bone, invisible that time under its decent coat of flesh and blood, mocked him: I will tell of this, it seemed to say, when you are gone.

The white dust on the plain before Troy made him think of bone-dust. So many had died here ... but they had burnt the corpses, and all that remained was white ash.

So many fallen, and all for one golden-haired, white-skinned bitch and her inconvenient lover. Achilles snarled noiselessly, and a boy scrambled to his feet from beside a smoky camp-fire. "My lord?"

"Go," Achilles told the boy, "and bring me word of Patroclus, when they have finished tending him."

He did not think his lover's wound was lethal. The cut was deep bone glimmering beneath the blood but clean, and otherwise he was unmarked. The Trojan who had wielded the sword was dead, of course: another would have seen to that if Patroclus had not kept his feet for long enough to kill him.

"It should have been me at his back," Achilles murmured. He had reached his tent: Briseis looked at his expression, and bowed her head. He was fond of her: but now she reminded him of a corpse, all pale skin and pale eyes.

"Is my armour clean?" he asked, seeing the filthy polishing-rag in her hand.

"Yes, my lord." Her hands were reddened with the work of keeping the bronze shining bright. He loved the reddish glint: it spoke to him of life. Sometimes, before a battle, when the world seemed bleached by imminence white sky above, sun veiled in heat-haze, and the dust, the damned white dust, everywhere, choking him this armour would be the only colour he could see. Then, as he shed enemy blood, red and bright and lively, onto the plain, Achilles would find his way back into the living world.

All the air in the tent had fled. Achilles sat on the ground outside, leaving Briseis to finish her polishing. He stared into the distance, out through the shimmer to the city, waiting for word of Patroclus.

Eventually the boy came back. "He lives!"

Achilles said nothing, and the boy's exultant smile wavered.

"He is awake, and he asks you to come," he said, less certain.

"I will," said Achilles, and favoured the youth with his quick, bright smile.

Patroclus was leaning on pillows when Achilles returned to his tent. The skin under his eyes was grey, and there was a grim twist to his smile, but he greeted Achilles as though his absence was expected.

Achilles stretched out beside his lover, running a hand gently over dark-tanned skin, feeling the curve and tension of hard muscle beneath. So unlike a woman's pale, pale body.

"I live, as you see," Patroclus said to him, and his smile was as indulgent as Chiron's, so long ago.

"How is the wound?" Patroclus' arm was bound up with dark blue cloth: it had been, Achilles thought, one of his own tunics.

"It aches," admitted Patroclus.

"Then let me distract you from the ache," said Achilles, low-voiced. They were alone in the tent, and none would enter unannounced while the two of them were here together. Achilles leant forward, dropping a kiss on his lover's throat. At first he tasted dust, but he sucked harder Patroclus moaned and tasted flesh, salt, the echo of blood under the skin.

"You live?" he said, lifting his head to examine the wine-dark bruise where his mouth had been. It seemed a good proof to him. "That's good."

"I think so," said Patroclus, grinning now. "For you would not love a corpse."

Into Achilles' mind there came a single flash of bloodless flesh and unresisting limbs, and wounds that no longer bled. Cold mouth, cold heart, and white bone beneath it all, waiting.

"I could not love a corpse," he said, and lowered his head to taste Patroclus' living mouth.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Contrelamontre colour challenge - white - in about forty minutes (time limit 45 mins)


End file.
